Finding The Best VPN To Use In Dubai: My Expat Story

Chris Beattie

February 8, 2016

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Best VPN Dubai

Update: July 5, 2016

​Moving to Dubai was not an easy decision to make. First, my girlfriend and I were pretty settled in our new flat. We were living close to both our families and were pretty happy with our lives. We had even begun to talk about starting a family.

Moving to the Middle East would not have even have crossed our minds. But then my Boss called me in for that meeting. I have to be honest, there was only one real incentive to make the move. Money. They were offering me a huge pay rise… more than twice my regular salary, as well as an apartment, car, and basically everything we would need. Oh and they kept stressing the fact that I’d be paying no tax… not a cent.

It took a few weeks to make up our minds, but in the end we decided it was just too good a package to turn down. A month on, and our flat was rented, possessions in boxes, and we were on the plane. Settling in was pretty easy for me, as I had work to go to, but for my girlfriend it was a lot harder. She spent a lot of time at our apartment to begin with, and missed home a lot.

I decided she needed some good old US entertainment to keep her spirits up, so looked into setting up a Netflix account for her. It turned out I couldn’t get US Netflix in Dubai without a VPN, so that’s where I headed next.

As it turned out, having a VPN has opened up a whole new link back to the country we both miss. We can access so many sites that were restricted to us here, as well as watching all the best shows on Netflix and keep up with the news stations too.

We are both settled here now and pretty happy. Baby talk is back on the agenda, and I firmly believe it is discovering VPNs which helped us get to this point. Almost all the ex-pats we have met here seem to use one, and after speaking to them I have put together this short guide to help anyone else looking to identify the best VPN Dubai users should go with.

So check out the 5 best VPNs for Dubai, which I list and go into detail on below:

Individual breakdown of each VPN...

#1 ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is the VPN we use here in Dubai, and despite dabbling with others, we still feel it offers the best level of performance and consistency of service. The installation process is nice and easy, the interface is very straightforward and its speeds are fast and consistent. It can be used on almost every device you can imagine, and also offers top notch privacy settings. They also offer a comprehensive range of servers encompassing almost every country you can think of.

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Pricing Summary

$12.95 for one month account $9.99 per month for 6 month account $8.32 per month for 12 month account​

Homepage Snapshot

Operating System Compatibility

VPN Protocols Offered

L2TP

PPTP

OPEN VPN

Pros

- A 30 Day Money Back Guarantee if you are not completely satisfied.

- Dedicated Apps for Android and iOS devices

- A wide variety of internationally recognized payment options.

- A really easy installation, registration, and setup process.

Cons

- They are in the middle-to-higher price bracket

- They require different logins if you use their service across multiple devices

#2 Buffered

A fairly new player on the market, but Buffered has certainly hit the ground running, offering some of the fastest speeds around alongside an extremely high level of encryption. As a new company they encourage feedback from customers, which they generally respond to quickly and efficiently. They are based in Budapest, Hungary, which allows them to apply one of the strongest levels of privacy protection of any provider we have reviewed.

Pricing Summary

$15 for 1 month account $12.50 per month for 6 month account $10 per month for 1 year account

Homepage Snapshot

Operating System Compatibility

VPN Protocols Offered

L2TP

PPTP

OPEN VPN

NAT Firewall

Pros

- A extremely high level of security

- A fast improving service as company establishes and grows.

- Great connection speeds

- Located in Hungary, meaning excellent user data protection

- A clean and user-friendly interface

Cons

- Rapid growth means occasional small bugs do occur occurring now and then

#3 NordVPN

One of the longest running and best regarded VPN providers out there, Nord VPN is located in Panama meaning they guarantee to retain zero data ensuring excellent privacy provisions. Not always the fastest, or with the widest range of servers, but they are renowned for the consistency of their service, and are available across a range of platforms.

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Pricing Summary

$8 for 1 month account $5 per month for 1 month account $4 per month for 1 year account

Homepage Snapshot

Operating System Compatibility

VPN Protocols Offered

L2TP

PPTP

OPEN VPN

IPSec

Pros

- Offer a 30 day money back guarantee

- High levels of security guaranteed

-Also offer simultaneous connections

- Accepts payment by a wide variety of methods, including BitCoin

- Top notch customer support

Cons

#4 IPVanish

IPVanish are another well established and regarded provider. They offer a good speed connection at a competitive price, and their customer service is also well regarded by existing users. Like Nord VPN, they guarantee zero-data retention, meaning their overall offering is very appealing

Cons

#5 VyprVPN

One of the oldest VPNs on the market, and yet still one of the most popular. VYPRVPN is very fast and offers an excellent and knowledgeable support staff on hand to help you with any problems. There are questions over their security levels after previous DNS leaks, but these problems seem to be behind them now.

Cons

Conclusion

So that concludes my pick of the top 5 best VPNs Dubai, based on my own experiences and those of the ex-pats I live and work with out here. All comments as well as the pros and cons I highlight are based on personal experiences I have either encountered myself, or heard from several reliable sources.

To find out more details about any one of my top 5, click on the links to go through to our full review, where you will find everything you need to know to help you make up your mind which VPN is right for you.

All those listed here will serve you well, but as I noted at the top, my pick of the bunch remains ExpressVPN. For overall service levels, security, speed, and price, it can’t be topped at the moment.

To recap, here's the summary table of the 5 best VPNs for Dubai one more time: